A Dinner Date

Family legacies, journeys - the challenging, the silly and holy - and a wonderful happy ending to one particular story within the story of my life

Dapes

Earlier in the day my husband had lovingly prepared a plate that included a variety of fruit including Tomcord grapes - which I learned from him area hybrid of Thomspon and Concord. I mused about where the P came in with Thom and his son…did his son have to pee? Was it a middle initial? Was Thom pissed? Or the son, perhaps didn’t want to get pulled along into the family business and he was pissed? Meanwhile, we remembered fondly when one of our children who is currently not speaking to us called grapes, “dapes.” Sometimes you do your best for your children and they still are filled with grapes of wrath and narratives that to you, the parent, have your empathy but not your agreement in terms of how things are wieghed or what even makes any sense at all. But few things make sense in this world. Certainly not all our feelings. Our kids feelings are valid even if we are sad at the way they have interpreted the ways their stories our ours intersected, and seem to have edited out all the good and blown their perception of the bad (in some cases real mistakes, and in some cases things we see as emotionally understandable but completely irrational.) Lately I can tell we are healing because we can recall stories from when they were little with fondness and maybe a few tears (well me, anyway) but it’s more of a glad-sad…glad to remember those precious moments even if they in a different frame than the one we are in within time, which of course, we all know, even our daughter’s souls, is an illusion. I told my husband affectionately that I want to go on a “dape” with him. He was on his break from work and we’d just had not only the fruit plate, but also the lunch I made, and I had a whisper of intuition for him to meet me at the park instead of coming home after work. I am still parenting fairly intensively with my son, trying to help him grow his fledgling wings gently, learn to manage his energy and build good habits. He is one of those kids who is far ahead of the curve on some things, while he has challenges most other people do not. He took longer to learn how to chew and sit on a stool without falling off, but taught himself to read at age two. Focusing is challenging for him, but when he does, he is able to learn nearly anything without much outside help. He is energetically sensitive in both similar and unique ways compared to me. A shaman once described him as me 2.0. My son is the only one of my children who I think has anything of me in them at all. I could have been a surrogate for how much of me my daughters got, other than the values they couldn’t help getting (and which my older daughter once expressed resentment over) by being in our family. Interestingly, our family has a legacy of children who do not seem to fit with the parents that birthed them. My grandmother crossed the tracks to marry my grandfather and rebelled against her wealthy anglo family by marrying 5 times and eventually choosing to live into old age alone with her animals in the woods of Oneonta New York. My mother rejected the alcoholism of her family, identifying with her Christian Scientist step-mom and later becoming a Sufi who married a Jew, my dad. My dad rejected his parents provincialism and circle the wagons Jewish culture, taught English in Brazil with the Peacecorps, where once in a local town full of corruption, a bear was elected to office as a write in. Later he too became a Sufi, met my mother in a bookshop devoted to Sufism in San Fransisco, and together they traveled to the Holy Land to participate in Dances for Universal Peace. This is not the time where I want to explore the ways in which my family became dysfunctional in extremes I wouldn’t wish on anyone, in spite of having begun with lofty intentions, or describe to you all the ways luck seemed stacked against them, and later against me, as I also had lofty intentions. And while I do believe I broke many family patterns and did way better than my parents, as I believe my parents hoped I would do, there were patterns I was at the mercy of that I succumbed to eventually in ways that I believe were part of our “agreements” on a soul level, yet that I wish, wish, wish I could have done better/different on a human level. Still, all that said, when I think of what I went through and how many chances I gave my folks and what my girls went through that they interpreted as horrible, there is nothing I can do except have empathy and remember that people live inside their stories, however irrational. And I remember when my youngest went through a phase where she was very irrational as a toddler and absolutely insisted on trying to tell me to do things in a very precise way that often simply wouldn’t work for me, such as she once wanted me to pretend to pee and then to allow her to put back on her poopy undies in which she had an accident. She outgrew that irrational phase, after months of setting boundaries that she couldn’t bite me - I’d go for a walk up the driveway and let her know I’d come back she was ready to calm down and eventually, under the stars, she would reach for me, let me hold her and relax into my arms and come snuggle in bed with us. I once asked her later what she was thinking or feeling when she would go through those tantrums that lasted hours, or that seeming absolute need to put back on her poopy undies. She had no idea. These are clear examples of “Father forgive them, they do not know what they do.”

Back to dapes. Although for decades I’ve chosen lunch and brunch as my outing meals of choice for their lower pressures vibes, when my husband pulled up on in our Prius to join me for a little while at the park, I had this thought of the angel hair pomodoro at this one place we usually go for lunch. It is gluten free and delicious. Angel hair pomodoro was also a favorite of mine as a kid. After a few moments of connecting - I even got a piggy back, before we strolled by the magnolia with its huge buds, already to stay gorgeously fuzzy all fall and winter until blooming in the spring - I asked my husband what he would like to do. We could have just gone home but I felt there was something for us to do. He mentioned the restaurant that has the angel hair pomodoro all on his own. How synchronous!

As it worked out, we stopped by and decided to go home first, let me change and check in with remaining at home kid, who is technically now an adult, but still needs a good amount of support, even as he is beginning to blossom and to receive feedback to that effect as he goes on more outings on his own.

By the time we made it back to the restaurant and were seated, me slightly cleaned from my jean shorts and dirty tank to a cute skirt and a tee shirt with an organic Etsy-purchased wrap around top in a creamy sky blue - the place was less busy and my body sighed in relief. The fellow hosting didn’t recognize me from 30 minutes before, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t put on heavy make up - just a hint of eyeliner and a tiny moon dust on my lids. Not even lipstick. He forgot that I’d made a reservation to come back. On the other hand, there are other people who work here who’ve seen me in varying degrees of dressed up or dressed downness that I know would remember either way. It amuses me. We were seated a booth in a corner - another “thank you” from my energetically sensitive body. Unlike other times so long ago where dinner felt like it carried with it expectations and obligations, I felt at ease to lean on my elbow, put my legs up on the booth and just be myself. We have been through so much together and my husband has seen me at my very worst and he also has come into his own soulful wisdom and lightness in such a way that he can see me in the dimensions of my soul that few people can. It is really a privilege to be known and loved in the worst and best of me, and I am forever graced and honored.

So there we were - talking - I forget about what, but it was a really good conversation - and suddenly I recognized my old neighbor who used to live across from us. I wrote about the backstory in an earlier piece. I’ve excerpted most of it below, so you don’t have to click on the older article unless you want to do so!

Healing Forgiveness Over Time

I didn’t see this particular old neighbor for years. We had a falling out when her dog bit my daughter…I was out at the time but when I came back shortly thereafter, I saw that my daughter’s shirt was in shreds and her back had deep lacerations. She was still tearful but calm and had an amazing knack for forgiving the dog. I put my immediate focus on her and began applying what I called “magic spray,” - a brand of natural sanitizer with coconut oil and tea tree oil that, sadly, I can no longer find anywhere. Next, I did some energy healing on her. Within a short time her wounds looked a lot better and I decided to hold off on taking her to urgent care until my husband came home to have a look. When the neighbor came over, I told her I wasn’t mad, but I did want to ensure this didn’t happen again. Instead of hearing me, she told me it wasn’t a bite, it was a nip, and that anyway it was my kids fault. My children had been doing very normal things that children did at her house all the time - my daughter was on the swing. My son opened a door. I am pretty sensitive to gaslighting. I didn’t want to put my daughter in the middle so I chose not to ask her to show the neighbor the lacerations, but it was easy to look at the shredded shirt and easily seen this was no nip.

Things concluded with me telling her to get off my property and her telling me stay off hers as well. I do my best to practice forgiveness. Over time things softened and at least civility returned when we actually ran into each other…Later, when that neighbor still lived here, for some reason she opened up to me that she was having a hard time with the world losing its shit regarding thinking clearly and critically. Her life partner is a vet. My husband is a doctor for humans. Neither of our families were into injecting ourselves or our kids or limiting our oxygen supply. When the two out of five families in a cluster have a doctor in the family and both are saying “uh uh,” but the rest of the world is saying, “You must you must,” it’s common ground that is meaningful even if there has been a history of difficult interactions. I gave her a big and sent her some resources in form of nerdy articles.

I asked my shaman at the time why she couldn’t just apologize, since clearly I was inclined to forgive her, I wanted to forgive her - I did forgive her, but I was still hurting. He said that she just couldn’t accept responsibility because it felt too hard to forgive herself. I think this is true of most good people who have trouble apologizing.

I once sat on a bathtub with my mother asking her to forgive herself. I knew if she could forgive herself, she might be able to change, might be able to look honestly at what she had done in a way that could transform and heal us both. But she said she couldn’t live with herself if she looked at it honestly that she couldn’t possibly forgive herself. That in itself was quite honest. Later, when I was talking to another spiritual mentor I had, when my first daughter left home and I was struggling with both feeling the unfairness of how my daughter treated me, as well as self-flagellation for the ways I wish I could have done better, even when I did my best, my mentor said, “This is a little bit of a family pattern. So don’t be hard on yourself. You can break the cycle by forgiving yourself. That’s what your mother couldn’t do.”

The neighbor and her family soon moved - to give their new dogs more room to run… I didn’t see her for a long time. Then in one week, my husband and I kept running into her! And now, there’s nothing wrong between us. Time, alongside forgiveness and a bit of common ground as dissidents has healed us. This old neighbor now in a program to be a couples therapist. She shared about how she feels she will be challenged by the limitations of what she can do - when she would want to be able to talk about nutrition and so much else. She still feels that most of our city is in a state of not being able to see certain things that are clear to both of us. I shared with her that she can support them just by being in a resonance of her sovereign divinity - that people can feel that and it can support them to begin to think their own thoughts, feel their own feelings, begin to listen to their own gut, intuition and soul. Later my husband ran into her again and she said she’d been thinking about what I said, and that it was helping her! And then a day later we both saw her again at the coffee shop with her son, who is now so big. He was standing on her feet as she walked him over to the case of goodies. They looked happy in their connection with each other and it was so good to see! This time our son was with us. On occasions in the past, he helped redirect that little boy when he had some aggressive tendencies, and modeled being a kind young man. I told my son, “Even though he doesn’t remember, you had an impact on him when it mattered. Look how much light is shining in him. You helped nudge the trajectory of his life toward the light of love.”

Each little decision we make to love and forgive ourselves and to love and forgive others makes a difference.

You make a difference.

Your positive influence matters.

You matter and you are here to be Love’s Light.

You are The Light of Love, mattering into Light.

Back to dinner - the dape my hubby and I are enjoying, when we see our old friend/neighbor, whom my husband had just seen the previous day while shopping, seated with one of her sons, her daughter who used to play with our daughter, and a cousin. She and I ended up having the best chat. I asked her how therapy school was going and she said “BETTER.” She went on to share, “I think of you a lot and what you said about just being the light. One of the challenges is they want us to stay ‘within our scope,’ and that is really hard for me when I can tell someone is nutritionally starved and a few tips would really help them with their mental health but I can’t say anything.” I told her she looked more full of light and she said she felt it. I also offered her an idea: I suggested she could find a colleague who is a nutritional therapist or some other similarly credentialed person to be someone she can refer to, who can also create a handout with their name on it and a list of suggested things to try out, along with an invitation to consult if they would like support or to work on things in greater depth. She then called out my husband as someone who could potentially do that for her, as he is a doctor. He then gave me a wonderful shower of appreciation, expressing, “I’ve learned most of what I know about nutrition from Alicia.” Our friend and former neighbor smiled knowingly and said, “I bet.”

On the car ride home I told my honey how happy it made me to know that our friend/former neighbor was now able to shine more light with her clients because of how I helped her. It gave a sense of meaning to all that I went through before that felt so difficult. It was all worthwhile.